CINEMATIC Billiards Video Shot HANDHELD
Shot this video with my friend Keegan when we were bored one night this past summer. We were feeling inspired by Daniel Schiffer and wanted to try out some of his mind blowing techniques. All we had though was my camera, a couple flashlights and some billiards stuff. (Keegan had a pretty nice tuxedo I guess too...) We planned out each take and wanted the video to flow nicely from shot to shot. The lighting was crappy, but we embraced it and wanted to give the video a sort of low-lit studio vibe. We moved the two flashlights around for each shot, tapping them to ladders, extra pool sticks, and even the ceiling. They weren't very bright so we were thankful for the insane low light capabilities on the A7III. When I was editing the video afterwards, I noticed there was a lot of noise and grain in the RAW footage. I was not surprised by this because I remember having to crank up the ISO when we were shooting because of our lack of expensive studio lighting equipment. But, instead of trying to fix the grainy footage, I decided to embrace it and make it look like we were going for a noisy and grainy look the whole time. This is a technique I picked up from one of my college professors which he called "shining a light on it". Basically, the idea is instead of trying to cover up imperfections when you edit, "shine a light" on them and make your viewers think that you did it on purpose. So, I added a Super 8 camera overlay and some extra film grain on top of the footage. And I think the look actually turned out pretty cool! The last thing I did to really make the video stand out was I added a bunch of sound effects. Sound design is a lot of work and typically something that people do not even notice. But, when done effectively, it can make a video a lot better. The sound effects I added are barely noticeable (how it should be) but if you listen carefully you might pick up on different whooshes, pool ball clicks, baseball bats clanging, carpet dragging noises, etc. The key is to make it sound accurate to the shot, even if you have to trick your listeners' ears with some unnatural/random sound effects. Also, don't overdo it. Subtlety is key. Hope you enjoy!
Shot on:
Sony A7III w/ 24mm 1.4 GM Lens
All my gear: https://kit.co/gdjs/my-gear